For immediate release: Media Contact: [email protected]

Brava presents Tina D'Elia’s

Overlooked Latinas The best, , telenovela of our time!

Directed by Mary Guzmán

February 16 – March 3, 2019 Brava Theater Center Studio

“Writer-performer Tina D'Elia's, solo comedy spins a queer and ethnically rich world… D'Elia, proves a sharp and engaging performer, her characters tending to be both endearing and amusingly full-bodied." - Robert Avila, Bay Guardian

From the unbridled imagination of Tina D'Elia comes her solo show Overlooked Latinas. Butch dyke Angel Torres thinks she's having the best day of her life. She and her best bud's TV pilot, "Overlooked Latinas," about beloved silver-screen Latinx folks of the past, has just been picked up. But like the best telenovelas of the era, Angel's life is about to become unhinged by a whole mess of melodrama. Enter the femme fatale creating chaos with Angel's wife and Angel's life.

Bios: Tina D’Elia (Solo Performer/Writer/Actor) Tina D’Elia is an award-winning Bay Area solo performer, actor, screenwriter and casting director. Tina’s acting credits include The Pursuit of Happyness, Knife Fight, Guitar Man, Junkie, Trauma (NBC), Rellik (Pilot), the web series (), and Dyke Central (Amazon). ). Her popular solo show, The Rita Hayworth of this Generation, directed by Mary Guzman, won Best of Fringe (2015) and Best of Sold Out Shows at the San Francisco Fringe Festival (2015). Tina and director Maria Breaux won the Frameline33 Film Festival Audience Award for co-writing the short film Lucha, (2009.) Tina recently received the Diversity Casting Award and Best Actress Award from the Equality International Film Festival (Emeryville, CA, 2017) and received the Executive Producer Award and the Trail Blazer Award for diverse casting and her diverse creative solo performance work with the Equality International Film Festival (Sacramento, 2015.) She was honored as part of the CURVE Power list of 2017 with national lesbian publication CURVE Magazine and was a guest presenter with the Capital Film Arts Alliance (February 2018) and The Actor’s Conference (San Mateo, CA, 2017). Tina’s solo performance work has been developed, workshopped, and co-presented with a variety of theater companies and performance spaces including New Theater (Boston, MA), The Theater Offensive (Boston, MA), The Marsh Rising Star (The Marsh, San Francisco, CA), Solo Sundays (Stage Werx, San Francisco, CA), Women on the Way Festival (Venue9, San Francisco, CA), The Mission Cultural Center (National Queer Arts Festival, San Francisco, CA), Brava! for Women in the Arts (San Francisco, CA), Luna Sea (San Francisco, CA), and The Garage/SAFEhouse (San Francisco, CA).

Mary Guzmán (Director) Mary Guzmán was selected for Directors Lab West 2018, an intensive created to inspire the future of the American Theatre, hosted by Pasadena Playhouse. She recently directed Skyler Cooper’s Living Proof, part of the critically acclaimed show Participants at Theatre First, and Ghost Limb by Iowa Playwrights Workshop MFA Playwright Marisela Treviño Orta at Brava Theater Center. Guzmán has worked with theater companies Crowded Fire in San Francisco directing Enrique Urueta’s Forever Never Comes and Shotgun Players production of Eric Coble’s Bright Ideas. A directing highlight was Enrique Urueta’s award winning Learn to be Latina at Impact Theatre in Berkeley, where it was named Best Ensemble Casts in a Comedy, Best Ensemble and Best Play. Guzmán directed Julia Jackson’s Children are Forever: All Sales are Final, winner of Best Non-Fiction Show Award at the United Solo Festival. Currently, Guzmán is in development with award winner Veronica Mejano on her new piece Los Siete and Tina D’Elia’s Overlooked Latinas. D’Elia and Guzmán are long-time creative partners, having worked together as a performer/writer and director team since 2005 on projects that explore racist, sexist, and homophobic mainstream culture within queer Latinx screw-ball comedy and film noir. Such works include: Groucho (2005-2007) and the solo show The Rita Hayworth of this Generation, that won Best of Fringe and Best of Sold Out in 2015.

Press Quotes for Tina D’Elia, Award Winning Solo Performer/Writer/Actor Overlooked Latinas “defies all theater going expectations of what makes a good show.”

- Annie Berman, Mission Local, February 18, 2019

In Overlooked Latinas “D’Elia creates many moments of scrumptious showbiz excesses and foibles...”

- Lily Janiak, SF Chronical, February 17, 2019

"Tina D'Elia is a Tour De Force!"

- Dee Dee Halleck, Paper Tiger Television, New York , November, 2013

“D’Elia is clearly a talented performer.”

- Brad Rosenstein, San Francisco Bay Guardian, September 2001

“D’Elia is a tour-de-force on stage, turning on a dime from one character to the next, bantering back and forth between them. She is a natural comedian, with the zany facial expressions and perfect timing of, say, Lucille Ball – make that Lucy and Ricky rolled into one, laughing out loud so much that you will miss some lines, and have you wondering how-in-heck D’Elia does it.”

- Patrick Letellier, The Slant, August 2001

"D'Elia is multi-talented – a versatile and very compelling performer. She sings, acts, does physical comedy and slapstick as well as changes characters physically and vocally every minute or two speaking fast paced dialogue”

- Jo Tomalin (UK)

"Tina D’Elia has that Magic talent; to have fun and to move the audience at the same time. Extraordinary!"

- David Ford (Dramaturge/Solo Performance Teacher/Goldie Winner (called the “Dean of Solo Performance by SF Chronicle)

For Calendar Editors: What: Tina D’Elia’s solo performance Overlooked Latinas

When: February 16 – March 3, 2019 Saturdays at 8pm; Sundays at 3pm

Where: Brava Theater Center Studio, 2781 24th Street (at York), San Francisco 94110

Tickets: $10 - $25 sliding scale brava.org